


A Challenging Face

by Leni Jess (Leni_Jess)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hp_springsmut, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:47:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leni_Jess/pseuds/Leni%20Jess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry thought the Widow Malfoy would be a pushover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Challenging Face

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Mildly dark, a bit of bondage, and a dash of humiliation.

Harry threw his head back, gasping, his body arching under the woman who straddled his thighs. The soft sounds she made were like purring. She was killing him, and enjoying it. This was incredible. He never wanted it to end, but she would break him if she didn't let him come soon, he was dazedly certain. What sins had he ever committed, what glorious deeds done, to deserve this?

She leaned forward, still not touching his straining cock, and ran her hands down his sides, fingernails raking. She never quite hurt him; she didn't need to. His breath sobbed in. Her palms slid up his sweating body until they settled over his nipples, then she took them between finger and thumb and squeezed. Oh Merlin. They had been there before. Her fingers were incredibly strong for a woman with such delicate hands, and she was without mercy. She pinched once, but then twisted sharply, and Harry gasped and writhed under her, just as she wanted him to.

"Harry."

Her voice was as soft as ever, but under that tender, elegant coating of flesh, lush in spite of her slenderness, she was diamond hard. She must be, to be able to stand this herself. Her own nipples peaked out above her rosy breasts, her cheeks were as pink as her breasts, and there was sweat damping her pale hair, thrust carelessly back over her shoulders, pulled loose from its elegant chignon long ago.

Obediently he answered, trying to steady his voice, "Narcissa."

At first he had thought she was simply checking to make sure he was still aware of her identity - a requirement that experience had impressed on Harry long ago; she need not have worried. The women he liked were strong and confident, and did not take well to being confused with the last woman he had been with, or the one before.

Now he knew it was something else, though not likely to be a need to be reminded herself of whom she was. No. This was Lucius Malfoy's untouchable widow, torturing him as a substitute for engaging in a Death Eater revel (if such things had ever happened), using his body to pleasure her own. She had come twice already, and still kept him hanging helpless; she hadn't let him enter her yet, and he doubted now that she would. He didn't care about it any more, either; all he wanted was to get off that hook and to rest. More likely, to pass out with pleasure and relief.

And, damn the woman, she was dragging him back from that edge he longed to tumble over and be blind and lost for ever in the mists below. Instead, memory of the last time steadied him without easing him in the slightest.

"Why did you ask?"

That was a different question from the one she had asked much earlier in the night, and a little more appropriate to a woman who had let a strange man twenty-some years her junior into her bed. Her first question had kicked his Auror defences into overdrive, however, and now they kicked in again. Harry could feel himself softening, just a fraction, not enough to help, just enough to clear his brain for the next exchange.

He answered with the honesty training recommended, partial though it was. "You're unbelievably beautiful, and I wanted you."

Something pleased her; her grey eyes warmed. Perhaps it was that 'and'. Not the compliment; she would know that for truth.

"Are you happy now?"

A trap that could bite hard enough to kill. She must know what her skills were doing to him, so he answered, forcing himself to a wry grin, "No, Mrs Malfoy, I'm damned unhappy, and so far I've enjoyed every moment."

He exaggerated only a little, to please her. The thought that she had honed those skills on Lucius Malfoy, and that he had allowed her to, was dizzying. Not his idea of the dead man at all. If he were dead. Wondering about that, even after four years, had brought him here to her bed. If he ever escaped alive he would remember these hours and her until time itself came to an end. He would like to escape with the truth, too, but he had little hope of that now. This woman never gave up control, and he could not now imagine her giving up such a secret.

Harry shifted slightly. His shoulders were stiffening, but he had been too far gone to care at the moment she had buckled the lined leather cuffs around his wrists and secured the chain to the headboard, and since then she had not misused her power. It had been delightful, at first, being teased and caressed and brought so slowly to readiness. Being unable to take the initiative from her and seize his climax had been exciting in itself. He wasn't sure when it had become torture, and even now that his body was sore and his nerves exhausted he wasn't altogether sorry he had let her constrain him.

This was an experience like no other. It crossed his mind that if he encouraged Morag to try it, they might both enjoy it enormously, but perhaps he should wait until this was over before wondering if it was a good idea to let another woman control him so completely.

"Was that all you wanted?"

Momentarily uneasy, Harry asked himself if she could possibly be a Legilimens, and on a rush of panic managed to clear his mind and conceal his thoughts. Damn, having to concentrate like that, ignoring everything else, didn't do much for his needy cock, which wilted just enough to frustrate him but not enough to relieve any of the stress. This was another form of torture, and he didn't like it nearly so well.

He managed to blink myopically up at her, hoping the famous large green eyes might have some of the effect on her they had on other females at this range. He replied, letting himself sound like the boy he had been rather than the man of today who had seized all offered experience with both hands, "I didn't know what I wanted. Just you. You."

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting himself relish some of those endless moments again. Narcissa Malfoy might have all the instincts of a Veela on the prowl - though as far as he knew her ancestry was impeccable - but the agony she created was worth it.

He opened his eyes again and managed to smile hopefully. "What I want now though, is for you to finish me off. Please."

She smiled that content-free Malfoy smile and he shivered, then whispered huskily, "Please, Narcissa. This is wonderful, but if you don't let me come soon I'm going to die."

She tilted her head sideways then smiled at him more brilliantly still. Luckily her eyes were no longer quite so cool. There was hope for him yet.

He whimpered involuntarily, and couldn't be bothered to curse his lack of control. She didn't want him self-controlled, and if he didn't give her what she wanted he would never get what he desperately needed as well as desired.

Her fingers tightened on his nipples again, pinching, but not too hard, just enough to make the sparks start to fly again, and she shifted slightly up his body, bringing herself closer to his cock, then close enough that she was rubbing her wet folds gently along it. Harry moaned, on fire once more. He was so close, so close to release, but only she would give it to him.

She brought him up the long slope again, until he was only a quivering weeping cock and an over-heated body that flinched at every touch, nerves hopelessly over-sensitised. Then she slid away. He cried out and his body lunged after her, jerking hard on the chain and the cuffs that held him in place.

A moment later he wailed as her mouth closed around the head of his cock without warning, hot, wet, sucking vigorously. It only took a few seconds. She didn't need to lick him, or take him deeper, or even put her hands around him. He came, hard enough almost to black out on the first pulse, and she kept her lips tight about him. He could feel her swallowing, and later found the bruises on his hips where she had held down his bucking body so that he should not escape her. It seemed to last for ever, plunging into that wet embrace, until he could feel himself coming down, slowly, and still she sucked at him, gently now, drawing the last of his climax from him.

Harry let his body go limp and his mind empty, instinctively understanding that she would take that inability to react as a compliment. She had taken everything from him, and now they both knew it.

When Harry drifted up he found her lying beside him, head on his shoulder, her long hair over his chest, some of it tickling one still tender nipple, her mouth open on his neck, one hand curved possessively round his soft cock, cradling it.

Then she sat up and looked at him measuringly.

Internally Harry sighed. Rest break over. Did she plan to kill him again? Would it be possible?

She scooped her hair back, another warning sign. He had not noticed her coming this time, but she must have done. Her nipples were softer, the flush across her cheekbones and temples was almost gone, and her slim body looked at ease, as it had not before. Was she satisfied at last? And if she was, what else would she want from him?

"So, Harry. Was the Widow Malfoy worth your time?"

That was ominous, but he answered with the same honesty as before, "I never imagined anything like this. You're wonderful. I loved it." As an afterthought he added, quite sincerely, though with reservations there was no need to share, "Thank you. Thank you for showing me."

He didn't add, 'Your husband was a very lucky man. Either that, or he's resting very peacefully in his grave.' Mentioning Lucius Malfoy while he was still handcuffed to her bed would be a mistake.

She pushed his hair back from his forehead, revealing the scar that had faded to a broad ugly line, silvery pink against the paler skin. After years of festering whenever Voldemort tugged, it would never be less than noticeable, but it was permanently quiescent now, which was all Harry cared about.

"A very pretty young man," she said thoughtfully. "You were such an unfinished child, promising, but undergrown, all knees and eyes." She stroked his chest. "A man, now. And using all you are, as you always did."

Harry tried not to swallow to reveal how uneasy that judgement made him.

She continued calmly, "We're better off without the Dark Lord. He was mad, and did the pure-blood cause no good. I am not altogether grateful to you for _everything_ , however, Harry."

She sat back. "You have a girl-friend - almost a fiancée, if I understand Duncan MacDougal correctly. What would she say to hear of this?"

Was this blackmail, threat, negotiation, or her idea of after-sex chat?

Narcissa went on, "You're an Auror of some experience now, well-thought of; I didn't need my escort tonight to tell me that, before you asked me to dance. What would they say to this?"

Harry summoned up his Slytherin side and said with a calm almost equal to hers, "I'm a good liar, Mrs Malfoy. What Morag and I are to each other is not yet anyone's business but hers."

"And her father's," she said flatly, but without evident disapproval. "Pure-blood brides are supposed to be virgin, did you know? Or is that one of the many things you still haven't learned about the wizarding world? Do you realise how much of an allowance Duncan is making for you, because you saved his neck by despatching Voldemort before it was Duncan's turn to die, like so many of his followers?"

She smiled, and it seemed to be amusement, not the malice her husband would have brought to it. "Didn't you know your father-in-law was a Death Eater, Harry?"

Harry kept his face still. This sounded like negotiation. "Unless you plan to present the Ministry with hard evidence, Mrs Malfoy, that's ancient history. Minister's policy, remember? Otherwise you might be in Azkaban yourself, though Draco wouldn't be."

"A proper Slytherin as well as careful," she agreed, settling herself, then reaching out to caress the exposed underside of one arm.

That startled him nearly as much as his own continued ability to respond to her touch while fighting off her attempts on his mind.

"A pretty boy. A good Auror. Quite satisfactory in bed; Morag should find you trainable." Ouch. "Not good enough for what you wanted, however."

"So what do you believe I wanted?"

Might as well have it out, though he would be much more comfortable if she freed him from those cuffs. He allowed himself to give no physical hint of that.

"You wanted Lucius," she replied with calm certainty. "Like everyone else. His body, dead or alive. But he escaped you all, Harry, and you may wonder all your days whether it was into death or into life."

Abruptly she rose and straddled him again, her hands wrapping around his cock.

"Now we have a little truth, let's see if you still find me wonderful."

Harry wanted to whimper, and found it truly astonishing that his body promptly responded despite its total collapse such a little while ago, and despite what she had said.

Instead he smiled, a confident, arrogant Gryffindor smile. "You're amazing," he said truthfully. "I can't imagine why you're bothering, though."

"To make quite sure you don't forget me."

Harry gave a short laugh. "You know very well I shan't."

She smiled again, with a charm that affected him in spite of all he knew and of the honest fear lurking in his guts of what she might intend.

"You're only a man, Harry," she murmured, "and I'm a woman. We always win. I'm a Malfoy, too, if only by marriage. We always win in the end, too. Learn it."

This time she used her hands and her mouth to drive him to distraction, concentrating almost entirely on his cock, his balls, even his arse, which startled him through the haze of re-awakened lust. When she had him writhing and moaning, pleading openly, and expecting at any moment to be pulled back from the desperate plunge of release, she took him into her mouth again. At first she just suckled strongly on the head, her tongue flicking under and around it and striking at his slit, but then she swallowed him and Harry cried out at being taken so entirely into that warm haven, feeling her throat moving on him.

Now it was he who was holding himself back, not her, untrusting. Then one of her fingers pressed into his arse, crooking to stroke him with knowing skill, and he bucked under her, screaming, blinded. He thrust into her mouth, feeling her hand firmly squeezing his balls, while that slim finger urged him on. His climax left him groaning and fighting to breathe.

It was not such a killer as the last one, but it was very satisfying, and Harry let himself ease back onto the bed to enjoy the last shudders of pleasure rippling through his body.

When he opened his eyes to look at her, some time after she had moved back from his body, she was quite calm. Doing that had not excited her at all. She had not permitted herself involvement this time, he realised. Another point in the weird argument he seemed to be losing, he supposed, not willing to fret over it yet, though he knew he should.

Narcissa slid off the bed and pulled on a silk dressing robe, lifting her hair out from under its collar and pushing it back over her shoulders, shaking it into some kind of neatness. He liked her better like this than in the formal robes she had worn tonight to the Minister's party for the new head of Magical Law Enforcement, however elegant she had been. Even if he could not see the details very well, she looked touchable, human; not the remote Widow Malfoy who had proudly carried her husband's name into a gathering of those who had defeated his cause.

No doubt the robe was a signal that she had finished with him.

Merlin, up all night and she still looked fantastic, all shining hair, glowing pale skin and wide, beautiful, untrustworthy eyes.

She picked up her wand and walked to the window, using it to pull back the curtains, revealing the windows open as wide as they would go, and a faint greyish pink light in the sky beyond.

"The night is almost done," she murmured, and looked him over again, before she added, "And so, I think, are we."

Harry braced himself for whatever shock might come next, hoping she would not use the wand dangling negligently from her fingers on him.

When they had come to this bedroom she had stripped out of her evening robes with the same careless speed as he had used with his formal Auror robes, though both had placed their wands where they could easily be reached from the bed. Harry had no hope of reaching his.

He tried to hide the apprehension that made his body want to flinch and squirm, tried to appear calm.

"Thank you then, for all of it."

"An interesting experience?"

"Very!" he answered fervently.

Even as he tried to summon his wand - a trick Aurors were earnestly encouraged to master - she flicked hers with a murmured spell. She was as quick with her wand as he would have been. His clothes vanished, and so did his wand. Her clothes disappeared too, but that was the least of Harry's worries.

"Then meditate upon it."

She flicked her wand at him again, and the cuffs slid from his wrists. Harry forced himself upright, ignoring the aches caused by lying with his hands above his head for hours, and straining on cuffs and chain when trying to lie as still as she had demanded. He snatched up his glasses; at least she had not despatched those into oblivion.

As he moved off the bed she trained her wand on him in undisguised threat.

"You may leave now," and to his astonishment she waved her free hand at the window.

He asked, "By the window?" realising how stupid he sounded.

The spell she murmured next forced him backward; in moments Harry found himself on the windowsill, then ducking under the window lintel to get outside before her spell flung him to the ground too far below. He grabbed the window frame, then the shutter fastened to the wall beside it.

"I can't fly!" he protested.

"Then climb, Harry, if you think jumping won't serve you. Or, of course, perch there until someone comes looking for you. Does anyone know where you went?"

He knew his face must be answer enough. They had not left the Minister's party together.

"You wanted to know how Lucius might have escaped, when all of you flung your anti-Apparition wards and your detection charms around the Manor to hold him in and locate him. I'll show you. Have you ever wondered how he stayed so fit and strong, a rich man, spoiled, no need to lift a hand to work? He climbed, Harry. From a child, when he was beaten for it, he climbed his own house - walls, roofs, rafters, chimneys. Lucius Malfoy became a part of his own house - no Auror charm could have distinguished them."

She laughed, and the spell pushed quite gently at his legs, edging his feet to the stone sill outside the window frame. Harry took a firmer grip on the shutter and swallowed hard.

"See if you can escape the same way. If you do, you'll find your clothes and wand laid at the foot of the front steps. If you don't, you may starve to death on the windowsill for all I care, and rot there."

Her smile was chilling. Harry shuddered.

"The house-elves would remove you before you became offensive. Good fortune, Auror Potter."

She stepped back, the skirt of her robe swirling in the haste of her turn away from him, and was gone. Harry extended his foot inwards tentatively. The apparently open space of the window was rigid against his foot, denying him entry, just as she had done.

Very well, he was out. Up, or down? He looked down and swallowed. The third floor was a long way up; Malfoy Manor rooms had high ceilings. There were no downpipes nearby, or other windows, and the golden stone looked disobligingly smooth. Above the window there was a narrow protrusion of stone, giving it some small protection from the weather. Not wide enough to kneel on, but certainly he could stand on it, if he could lever himself up there. Those frightful lessons on Beachy Head with Mad-Eye Moody directing came back to him. No ropes or hooks here, either.

The stone looked safely solid. He reached above his head and gripped, shifted, let his hands take all his weight. No tremors, though his shoulder muscles complained. He lowered himself carefully to the sill again. A little forward planning wouldn't go amiss. One thing those cliffs had taught him, you couldn't always retrace the moves that left you trapped.

He mapped out a potential route to the roof, with some alternatives, and started. After a while he was cursing his dangling cock and balls as much as his wincing bare feet, scraped toes and fingers, and broken nails, and trying not to flinch when those currently useless appendages were bruised yet again. Despite the increasing discomfort he pushed himself on as fast as he could. Narcissa Malfoy had put him out, but she might yet change her mind about giving him a chance to get away from this stone trap.

A nightmare age followed of gripping with fingers and toes, squeezing them into cracks of stone, using them to force his body up, while his distance view of the miles of wall above him improved with the rising sun. The guttering made an unattainable horizon.

Eventually Harry lay panting like a broken bellows, blind with sweat, flat on the leads of the roof, having crawled until the slope became less cliff-like. Involuntarily his fingers curled tightly round the edge of the sheet of lead he lay on, and his feet shifted until his toes found another edge to push against. The lead was warm in the morning sunlight. He thought he might cling to it for ever, and the very thought pushed him to his knees again. He couldn't stop now. Even when he reached the ground he couldn't stop; he had to get off the grounds of Malfoy Manor first.

He scrambled at first on hands and knees, then rose to his feet cautiously. He did, after all, have a good head for heights. When he reached the roof ridge he stopped, amazed by the view. A whole secret country of narrow valleys, steep cliffs, and even broad slopes met his eye, lead roofs in every direction, broad stone chimneys capped by majestic pots, even low walls of stone along some edges. So complex as to be unmappable. He surveyed it for as long as he felt he safely could. Somewhere there were routes to safety, paths to the ground, and he had to find them. No years of exploring for him; he had to get it right this one time.

He found no bones.

* * * *

Harry stepped to the ground from the last iron rung set in the side of the chimney. His feet relished the touch of real earth, with living green things springing from it. He had cased the enclosure from above; a garden set in a nook created by at least two extensions. A small cyst of life still growing in the stone monster.

This was a herb garden. He thought if he had more time he could make use of some of those herbs to soothe his cuts and bruises, but getting out was far more important.

A garden should have a water source, but he couldn't see one, so he dismissed the idea of a long drink and marched over to the door between the rosemary bushes. He knocked. Maybe a house-elf would come. They would probably want to pick herbs long before he was dead, he thought wryly.

Soon enough one appeared, clad in a clean linen teatowel with the Malfoy crest in the corner. It looked him up and down - mostly, it looked him right in the privates - before it giggled, unmistakably. It went to close the door, but Harry was too quick, setting his shoulder against it, and pushing his way in. The house-elf shrugged and stepped back, and Harry staggered across the glazed clay tiles and almost into the broad worktable in the centre of the room. Harry heard another giggle and rolled his eyes, but he was beyond embarrassment at realising the elf could have closed the door in his face, had it chosen. Perhaps if he asked politely…

The house-elves of Malfoy Manor apparently did not share, or did not understand, Narcissa Malfoy's hostility. This one gave him a glass of water and, after a few sly glances, a long narrow strip of linen. Harry wrapped it twice around his hips, knotted it, and managed to turn the ends into a sort of breechclout, covering his much abused private parts at last, tucking the ends through the linen swathed around him, letting the last bits hang loose. The house-elf gave a tug on the piece dangling behind him, but apparently was only setting it straight.

Harry rolled his eyes again and said, "Thank you." He had found that while this elf was not devastated by thanks as Dobby had been, it did like to have them.

With some hesitation he asked - after all, this one might not know the lady of the house had put him out like an unwanted cat, "Do you know who I am?"

It knew enough to giggle again, before it said, "Cheeky boy. Mistress doesn't want you here."

"I'm still here," Harry pointed out. "Would you show me to a door that would get me out of the house, as she wants?"

It definitely knew. "Boy wants front door," it said decisively. "Sanny show."

If it let him out of here, and took him straight to where his wand (and his clothes) should be, it could laugh at him as much as it liked. As for calling him 'boy', it could be any age. So long as that wasn't short for the Boy Who Lived and Eventually Knocked Voldemort Off, Harry didn't mind.

On the way to the front door, through increasingly wider and finally imposing passages, they met several other house-elves. A couple scuttled past hastily, one ran away, but one giggled, and the last looked him up and down, grinning, before it made what he suspected was a rude gesture, and disappeared with a soft pop. Plainly not all of Malfoy Manor's house-elves considered themselves utterly oppressed. Harry could hear the bedtime stories being told in the house-elf quarters now, but he doubted that he was the only wizard the elves found amusing.

Harry sighed involuntarily as the house-elf waved the front doors wide. He said a last fervent "Thank you," and hastened down the broad steps. On the very last, right over to one side, was a neat heap of red Auror robes, with a wand laid across the top. Harry grabbed the wand and seconds later had shed the linen wrappings and was fully clad without the use of his hands. Only then did he wonder if Narcissa had booby-trapped the robes. He sighed again. If she had, he deserved to be caught in the trap.

As he marched towards the ornamental wrought-iron gates he could just see in the distance, through the ornamental trees on the curving carriageway, he reflected that if Lucius Malfoy was indeed dead he might be glad to be. If he was alive, and away from his terrifying wife, he might even be a very happy man. If he had lived with her for nearly thirty years and enjoyed it, he was a much tougher man than Harry would ever be. Perhaps he deserved to be left in peace.

Harry might go on trying to find out what happened to Lucius Malfoy, but he wasn't going near Narcissa again. If he did she would probably have his balls on toast for breakfast, when she tired of confusing him. No wonder Draco had such a deep respect for his mother. So did Harry now, even if, safely away, he might let himself live again those fantastic hours in her bed. Once he recovered from the cold shudders.

~~The End~~

**Author's Note:**

> Written March 2005 for hp_springsmut, for scela_letifer. My beta readers were jeddy83, who encouraged me to sharpen up the slower bits, and ntamara.


End file.
